Is Inovelli dead? I’ve loved their products but haven’t been able to get them for months. I’ve built up a lot of rewards points and can’t even use them cause the products I need are out of stock.
Finally got notice they were back in stock. Clicked the link within 5-mins of getting the email and it’s all out of stock.
Then I emailed Inovelli twice asking about it and get zero response.
Love their products but definitely getting frustrated here. I’ve got half my house running Inovelli and wanted to stick with the same switches throughout. Now I’m kinda regretting what I’ve installed so far.
Definitely not dead. They’re running into supply chain issues like all tech companies these days. The chips for all of their products have 6-12 months lead times. Graphics card manufacturers are having the same issues.
Was this about 13 days ago? There was a system error that erroneously reported items in stock. See the end of this thread. Also a good thread to watch for item availability.
Regarding the lack of availability, it’s attributed to the general worldwide chip shortage. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but lead times for some products are ridiculously long.
Not dead – just in a very, very crappy situation right now that we’re trying to pull out of. Luckily there is light at the end of the tunnel as there didn’t seem to be a couple months ago.
Long story short, chip shortage + load times quadrupling on certain parts (MOSFET) + ongoing back/forth with our manufacturer over payment terms = we’ve had to scale back on certain products (Black Series, Lightstrip, etc) and also not back-fill positions where headcount is lost.
Money that normally goes towards operations now has to go towards inventory that we won’t even see until the end of the year.
I’m assuming you’re talking about Red Series Dimmers as that was a glitch in our automated email system. We’re still working out bugs and that one burned a bit and I apologize as everyone wrote in upset about it (rightfully so).
I’m honestly not sure why no one responded to you
The problem with the Red Series Dimmers is that they use MOSFET, which now is looking at 52 week lead times . We’re trying to pivot to TRIAC on these (and our new manufacturer has done so for ZigBee) but our current manufacturer is being a pain in starting new projects for us, which they consider this to be a new project if we switch from MOSFET to TRIAC.
Good news is we have a large order coming in July of RS Dimmers, but the outlook after that is very bleak.
Tough times right now and we’re trying our best as a 6 person team!
Were you writing in to the ticketing system or via social media? I don’t see any tickets from you since March except for one that looks like it was started yesterday as a follow up to this post. So just FYI…your tickets may not be coming through to us so that’s likely why you didn’t get a response from anyone. Sorry!
So I just replied to the In-Stock email I received. Twice. Looks that the reply address is [email protected] on that one. I remember making sure it wasn’t a noreply@ address, but figured contact@ would have went somewhere.
Hmmmm – @Brianna_Inovelli can you and Ali take a look at this? It should come to our ticketing system if someone replies to the emails, but maybe something’s happening.
@Eric_Inovelli first - hang in there! Love your products - they’re definitely worth the wait.
Are the bulbs also using MOSFET? These seem to have been out of stock for some time now although I’m also not good at checking my email haha
Hopping in on a thread that’s not mine just to say “HOLY SHIT YOU ARE ONLY A 6 PERSON TEAM?!”
Good job for real tho on an awesome product. Sucks the situation, but I look forward to purchasing more… eventually
I’m not honestly sure tbh. I think what the issue was with these were that no one bought them unless they were severely discounted (ie: we had open box for $18 or something like that and we ended up losing a ton of money on them), but then people caught on at how awesome the bulbs really are so they started purchasing them at normal prices.
We initially told the manufacturer that we weren’t going to sell these anymore bc of the large loss we took on them, but once things turned around (and we also got some very large B2B customers interested in them) we decided to bring them back. The 500 Series chipset is at a 28-32 week lead time so it’s still a ways out and why they’re taking so long to get back in stock, whereas our switches also have this same lead time, but we place orders regularly for them.
This honestly sums up perfectly what happened. We went from 12 to 16 to 28 to 52 week to, “we honestly can’t say when things will be available” lead times in what seemed like a months time. It really seems to be boiling down to certain parts and the good news is we are getting visibility into what those parts are so we can potentially swap them out.
Lol we get this a lot. There’s actually 4x full time people (Eric’s x2, Courtney and Brianna) and 2x part time (Nate, Donovan). We want to hire more but the money needed for overhead is having to be spent on inventory
Good news is the team has really embraced the, “startup” culture and see the light at the end of the tunnel. When funding hits the bank and logistics level out, I do plan on having some sort of company retreat… Even if it’s just stay-cations for everyone for a few days haha!
Thanks that actually means a lot. More than you know. With the limited staff and putting in 50-60+ hrs (some 80+), sometimes things slip through the cracks and we always hear about the negative impacts, but rarely get recognized for the positive impacts, so thank you. I will pass this on to the team (however, we all read the forums so I’m sure they saw it!)
Sad how that seems to be human nature with online comments
So I’ll add one more for the positive side…
In my opinion, Inovelli has the coolest, most feature-rich smart switches out there. As this point, its the ONLY brand of smart switch I want. Even with the few existing firmware issues, I continually recommend them to anybody and everybody I talk to in the market. And I plan to buy many more when inventory stocks up again. I’m eagerly waiting to get a bunch of the Inovelli Aux Switches (project: Golden Rule) and also interested to see what develops with the new Blue Series.
Ditto. This is the only product where I can personally say that I take time out of my (busy) schedule to help them beta test and come up with ideas, wait patiently, and see them come to fruition. I posted earlier about how with SBM 2.0 I literally have everything I needed in this switch, and way more than I could possibly have wanted. Now the struggle is harnessing the power within my grasp.
Cheers to inovelli, figuring out the product AND the customer at the same time is rare air, and you guys sure make it happen.
I’ll throw my hat in the ring to say that these guys know exactly what they are doing and are phenomenal for what they are able to achieve given the small resources they have. The chip shortage sucks and effects most of the technology companies. The ones effected most are the smaller ones such as Inovelli.
Edit: I should get my account linked to the forum account. Totally forgot to check that. @Courtney_Inovelli would you be willing to help on that part?
Don’t get me wrong. I love Inovelli products, and their support has been amazing as well. I was just concerned about bigger issues when I sent multiple emails and nobody responded.
Turns out there was a bug with emails going to [email protected] which has since been patched, so that’s a good thing!
Can’t wait for the supply issues to resolve themselves so it’s easier to get our hands on Inovelli products!
I have loved Inovelli products for years! I’m not one for being a huge supporter for many products, but over the years Inovelli has been there for us. Is there anything the community can do to help?
Its not just Inovelli. Ive been buying NYCE sensors and having the same problem with them. 1 or 2 might show up on Amazon every month. Ive heard disputes with China and the pandemic are to blame. Hopefully this is the case, but it makes me wonder if I didn’t join a dying technology with zwave and zigbee. Wifi devices seem to be staying stocked just fine so idk.
Google and Amazon are pushing Wi-Fi. It’s “easy” and works with their stuff.
Given that my router has a limit of like 253 IP addresses, I am not so sure it scales well (yet, anyway).
And, the automation is NOTHING like you can get with a good hub. But, it gets you hooked in their eco-system, even if about all you can do is yell at a speaker device to turn something on and hope it gets it right eventually.
. We’re trying to pivot to TRIAC on these (and our new manufacturer has done so for ZigBee) but our current manufacturer is being a pain in starting new projects for us, which they consider this to be a new project if we switch from MOSFET to TRIAC.
Bummer. Hope things continue improving. I still don’t understand how the global supply chains have gotten SO totally messed up. Wow.
